Diogo De Carvalho CabralTrinity College Dublin | TCD · School of Histories and Humanities
Diogo De Carvalho Cabral
PhD
About
61
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Introduction
I'm a historical geographer and environmental historian interested in the relations between human and nonhuman animals (especially insects) throughout Brazil's history. I'm also interested in the epistemological and methodological implications of the human/nonhuman coauthorship of texts.
Additional affiliations
January 2017 - May 2017
November 2015 - November 2016
January 2015 - November 2016
Publications
Publications (61)
The article proposes a novel approach to Brazil's history by radicalising environmental history's call for writing biophysical environments into the human past. We offer three independent narrative experiments centring nonhuman organisms and things and their power to shape human lives, institutions, and documents. Focusing on ants, mosquitoes, and...
Although environmental justice scholars have been addressing spatial scale for at least thirty years, one of its components remains largely overlooked, namely extent. In this paper, we investigate the effects of extent variation in environmental (in)justice patterns by analyzing the statistical associations between socio-economic marginality and en...
Book Review
Rohland, Eleonora. Historia Entrelazada y el Medio Ambiente: Transformaciones Socioambientales en el Caribe, 1492-1800. Bielefeld: Kipu-Verlag, 2020. 81p.
Debido a sus características interdisciplinarias y transdiciplinarias, el campo de la historia ambiental involucra una amplia gama de herramientas teórico-conceptuales y metodológicas, que contribuyen a responder preguntas o plantear problematizaciones sobre los cambios ecológicos y geográficos en el pasado. Por tanto, el panorama de análisis y apl...
Without denying its striking destructiveness, deforestation can be seen as a socio-ecological process through which humans negotiate their place-making with the earth and its nonhuman inhabitants. In this article I combine qualitative and geospatial methods to document and analyse how forest clearing drove the range expansion of Atta ants in southe...
"Debido a sus características interdisciplinarias y transdiciplinarias, el campo de la historia ambiental involucra una amplia gama de herramientas teórico-conceptuales y metodológicas, que contribuyen a responder preguntas o plantear problematizaciones sobre los cambios ecológicos y geográficos en el pasado. Por tanto, el panorama de análisis y ap...
O presente capítulo objetiva abrir um caminho de investigação para discutir três grandes problemas largamente negligenciados na historiografia. O primeiro é ontológico: até que ponto a Mata Atlântica é “natural” e até que ponto ela é “construída” pelas ações e ideias humanas? Nós argumentaremos que se trata de compreender o bioma a partir do emaran...
In this article, I intend to creatively synthesize both the empirical findings and the theoretical formulations put forward by self-proclaimed environmental historians, as well as those by the scholars who preceded and influenced them. Establishing a dialogue with the broader field of Environmental Humanities, especially posthumanism, I propose thr...
The history of conservation of the Atlantic Forest is paradoxical. While, on the one hand, it is one of the richest and most important biomes for the conservation of planetary biodiversity, on the other hand, it is one of the world's biomes most threatened by anthropogenic erosion. In this context, the relations established between traditional huma...
The Call for Papers is open for the V CHAM International Conference on the panel 06: "New Materialisms, New Realisms, and the Boundaries of the Human"
Deadline: February 28th
http://chamconference2021.fcsh.unl.pt/call-for-papers/
Despite evidence to the contrary, favelas still loom large in Brazilian social imaginary as the quintessential poverty pockets. No study to date has systematically examined the place of favelas within the broader geographies of poverty in Brazilian cities. How prominent are these settlements in the context of urban poverty? How do they fare when co...
This article explores the conflicts between people and Atta leafcutter ants over the meaning of anthropogenic deforestation in nineteenth-century Brazil. As human agricultural settlement advanced, ants followed in its wake, harvesting leaves, flowers, fruits, and other plant parts from crops to supply their underground fungus gardens. In so doing,...
Resumo As florestas urbanas do Rio de Janeiro são uma das expressões mais completas do caráter mais-que-humano das chamadas "paisagens culturais". Longe de uma natureza intocada, as florestas cariocas são comunidades de plantas que se desenvolveram em terras anteriormente usadas para agricultura, produção de energia, abastecimento de água, e habita...
This essay discusses alphabetic literacy’s geographic implications to the early-modern
European colonization of the Americas, especially of those regions inhabited by tribal groups with no writing systems. Based on the understanding that any written text is as much a folding of as an unfolding in the world – a compressed representation of “concrete...
In recent decades, ecosystem theory has revisited the meaning of human action. There is a growing tendency to recognize that, once “left alone”, human modified ecosystems do not return to their primitive state. Recently, this notion has been radically advocated by a group of ecologists who propose the concept of “emerging” or “novel” ecosystems. Em...
Although it has received less scholarly attention than firearms, microbes, domestic animals and plants, market economy, and statecraft, alphabetic reading and writing was crucial in the European conquest and colonization of the Americas from the late 15th century on. Unlike the agrarian empires the Spaniards encountered in the Andes and the Mexican...
Como invenção moderno-colonial, a América Latina por séculos foi vista como “espaço” puro, um continente vazio a ser preenchido. Pretensamente impelidos e agraciados pela vontade divina, os europeus viam a si mesmos como agentes históricos no duplo sentido da expressão, ou seja, como atores e escritores do drama da colonização. Com suas armas, sua...
Recently included on the UNESCO World Heritage list, the urban forests of Rio de Janeiro are one of the most thorough expressions of the more-than-human character of the so-called ‘cultural landscapes’. Far from pristine nature, Rio’s forests are plant communities that developed on land previously used for agriculture, energy and water supply, and...
Along with fire arms, domestic animals, microbes and the state apparatus, the Alphabet integrated the biotechnical device that, at the start of the sixteenth century, the Renaissance Europeans used to win, plunder and rule the Amerindian people of the Atlantic Forest. As most other parts of the New World, writing was fundamental to the patchy appro...
No Brasil, as favelas – ou "aglomerados subnormais", segundo a nomenclatura
do Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE) – são vistas,
geralmente, como bolsões homogêneos de pobreza e baixa qualidade de vida.
De fato, é isso o que mostra um olhar “panorâmico” sobre as cidades. No
entanto, quando empregamos o conceito de escala como est...
Along with fire arms, domestic animals, microbes and the state apparatus, the Alphabet integrated the biotechnical device that, at the start of the sixteenth century, the Renaissance Europeans used to win, plunder and rule the Amerindian people of the Atlantic Forest. As most other parts of the New World, writing was fundamental to the patchy appro...
A Mata Atlântica sempre participou ativamente dos destinos do que viria a ser o nosso país. Já no seu batismo pôs-se a trabalhar. Ancorado em Porto Seguro, Pedro Álvares Cabral mandou cortar madeira e falquejar cruz para rezar missa em terras continentais. Batizou-se a terra com sangue de árvore, dando-lhe o nome de Vera Cruz. Por este ficou conhec...
Neste artigo compósito, proponho uma leitura não-antropocêntrica da história territorial brasileira. Na Parte I, procuro reconstruir teoricamente o conceito de território de modo a ‘subjetificar’ toda e qualquer coisa terrena, descentrando a agência histórica. Para isso, sugiro encarar o território como um campo vital contínuo (i.e., sem ‘buracos’)...
The essay argues for the importance of environmental history as a critique of the currently dominant ways of thinking and acting towards the extra-human world. It is argued that, under the religious and philosophical influence of Judeo-Christianism, Western civilization has built their cultural identity around the idea of creation, especially from...
Neste artigo compósito, proponho uma leitura não-antropoc
êntrica da história territorial brasileira. Na parte I, reconstruo teoricamente o conceito de território de modo a ‘subjetificar’ toda e qualquer coisa terrena, descentrando a agência histórica. Para
isso, sugiro encarar o território como um campo vital contínuo (i.e., sem ‘buracos’), divers...
Quase toda cena que tentemos imaginar do cotidiano da sociedade colonial terá, em seu substrato mais sutil, diversos elementos, cuja arqueologia, se feita com minúcia, nos levará ao ponto de partida inexorável: o lenho da árvore. Se há algum fundamento para falarmos de uma "civilização do açúcar", uma "civilização do couro" ou uma "civilização das...
This work aims to evaluate which landscape features could influence the maturity of fragments of the Serra do Mar Coastal Forest in the southeastern Brazil. We measured vegetation structure of 11 forest fragments, and used basal area as indicator of forest maturity state. Landscape features were characteristics of forest fragment, including size, s...
This work aims to evaluate which landscape features could influence the maturity of fragments of the Serra do Mar Coastal Forest in the southeastern Brazil. We measured vegetation structure of 11 forest fragments, and used basal area as indicator of forest maturity state. Landscape features were characteristics of forest fragment, including size, s...
Wood was a critical natural resource to the metabolism of pre-industrial urban centers, both as a building material and as an energy source. Due to the low value/volume ratio of wood products, wood economy was largely determined by transport costs. Thus, a theoretical framework that may be important to understanding the phenomenon of pre-industrial...
RESUMO O artigo discute as relações entre sociedade e natureza, na cidade do Rio de Janeiro, no século XIX. Nossa proposta metodológica é construir múltiplas narrativas que se desdobram e conectam a partir da observação das relações diretas e indiretas dos humanos com uma das substâncias mais importantes à sua reprodução biológica e social: a água....
ASSIM COMO " ECOLOGIA " antes dela, a expressão " história ambiental " extravasou os limites da academia e qualquer tentativa de domá-la é fútil. Mesmo na academia, não faz sentido tentar exercer qualquer suposta autoridade para cercear a " correta " aplicação do rótulo. Quem dirá que o que aquele geólogo ou geógrafo interessado na erosão quaternár...
The paper discusses society-nature relationships in nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro city. We propose a methodological framework based on the construction of multiple narratives that unfold and connect themselves from the observation of direct and indirect relations of humans with one of the most important substances to their biological and social...
O artigo apresenta uma revisão das contribuições ao tema da história da indústria madeireira na Mata Atlântica. Após uma breve exposição conceitual, na qual delineamos a noção de Mata Atlântica brasileira, passamos em revista aos trabalhos, organizados em dois grandes períodos: o colonial, estendendo-se, para além da época do domínio português, até...
Although some important precedent works already called attention to the theme and, in a certain way, foretold a delineation of the object, it may be said that Warren Dean's With Broadax and Firebrand (1995) and Shawn Miller's Fruitless Trees (2000) are the real founders of Portuguese America's forest historiography. Dean and Miller have established...
The paper reviews contributions to the subject of the history of the timber industry in the Atlantic Forest. After a brief explanation of the general concepts and a more detailed one of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, we have a closer look at previous works, which we organized in two major epochs, the so-called colonial epoch, which is characterized...
The article aims to contribute for the still rarified historiography about the extraction of madeiras-de-lei, those tree species that are particularly suitable for shipbuilding and, for that reason, legally reserved for preferential appropriation by the Portuguese crown in the Brazilian colonial territory. The space-temporal outline embraces the in...
Although remote sensed methods provide reliable basis for identifying the amount and spatial configuration of deforestation, they cannot solely explain its underlying causes. For that, we need to complement the imagery analysis with socio-economic data from household or farm-level studies, because these domestic units affect process such migration,...
Colonial Brazil's forests are a fascinating new topic in environmental history. Since W. Dean's With Broadax and Firebrand (1995), the field has been growing as more specific themes have been proposed and investigated. In Fruitless Trees (2000), a pioneering broad-scale incursion on the subject of the timber industry, S. W. Miller builds a theory t...
Apesar de os métodos de sensoriamento remoto serem capazes de fornecer bases confiáveis
para a identificação da quantidade e da configuração espacial do desflorestamento, eles não
podem, sozinhos, explicar suas causas. Para isso, precisamos complementar a análise de
imagens com dados sócio-econômicos advindos de levantamentos de campo ao nível da u...
Although remote sensed methods provide reliable basis for identifying the amount and spatialconfiguration of deforestation, they cannot solely explain its underlying causes. For that, weneed to complement the imagery analysis with socio-economic data from household or farmlevelstudies, because these domestic units affect process such migration, lan...
The paper defends the use of hydrographic basins as analytic spatial outlines in environmental history. Using as empirical background the timber exploitation of colonial era, the author searches to legitimate its validity as a geographical entity integrator of a natural process the draining of superficial waters , and a mode of extraction socially...
A história sócio-florestal do Brasil Colônia traduz-se como o desenvolvimento articulado de uma grande diversidade de formas de apropriação ambiental. Até agora, contudo, esta história tem sido contada quase exclusivamente do ponto de vista da agricultura e seus atores hegemônicos, os grandes latifundiários de exportação. O objetivo deste artigo é...
The colonial Brazil's forest history can be thought as an interdependent development of many kinds of environmental appropriation. Until now, however, this history has been written from the almost-exclusively point of view of agriculture and its hegemonic actors, the large farmers. The aim of this article is to expand our analytical framework by in...
The study identifies deforestation patterns discernible by the spatial arrangement created by land-appropriation/land-use practices in Macacu River Basin (RJ), between 1969 and 1996, examining their implications to forest fragmentation process. Taking a 11 fragments sample, two types of procedures were applied: interpretation of three sets of aeria...
The study identifies deforestation patterns discernible by the spatial arrange- ment created by land-appropriation/land-use practices in Macacu River Basin (RJ), between 1969 and 1996, examining their implications to forest fragmentation process. Taking a 11 fragments sample, two types of procedures were applied: interpretation of three sets of aer...
Questions
Questions (2)
I'm especially interested in leafcutter ants.
I'm looking for literature that discusses the concept of 'vernacular landspaces'.
Projects
Projects (2)
Humans live in (and thereby alter) environments as much as they and their activities are themselves the environment of other living beings. As selves, these beings interpret what humans do and act accordingly, producing historically consequential environmental transformations. This project explores the conflicts between people and Atta leafcutter ants over the meaning of anthropogenic deforestation in Brazil from the 16th to 20th centuries.
